The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.

A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.

We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.

None love to speak so much, when the mood of speaking comes, as they who are naturally taciturn.

You cannot play the hypocrite before God; and to obtain pardon you must cease to sin, as well as to be exercised by a spirit of repentance.

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.

Men of dissolute lives have little incentive to look forward to the hopes and glories of immortality. A due conception of these would be incompatible with such a life.